Music, Theatre, and Diplomacy: The Paris Opéra during the Second Empire

One of the first accomplishments of the Second Empire (1852–70) was to bring the Opéra under the control of a committee of the most highly placed politicians in the land. While this had far-reaching consequences for the development of repertory in the capital and beyond, it also opened up the possibility of using the Opéra as a locus of diplomatic activity, and major works and productions were made to work for diplomatic purposes. The Opéra emerged as a site of four types of diplomatic activities: the spectacle of state visits, the celebration and monumentalizing of military victories, the restoration and maintenance of good relations, and the promotion of Napoléon’s imperial project. Occasionally, as at the end of the “Crimean war,” the Opéra served as one of the sites for a series of prolonged negotiations that would lead to formal treaties.

Opera History, the Travel Edition

This book has been in my bag for a long time and, on reflection, I am glad that I have read it gradually. When the central premise is so simple – Grand Opera Outside Paris is, indeed, about Grand Opera outside Paris – the payback comes in the detail of individual chapters and the slow emergence of a Europe-wide survey of encounter and exchange. The volume's editor, Jens Hesselager, provides an erudite and generous introduction, beginning with the familiar difficulty of defining grand opera and the importance of attending to specific performance contexts. In the first instances, of course, this meant the Paris Opéra, and Hesselager draws our attention to Sarah Hibberd's observation that the coherence of the genre was initially established ‘more through the licensing requirements of [this] institution than by [any] specific dramatic content’ (1). From here, the introduction gently encourages us to look outward.

Opera Inside and Out

In three main sections, the discussion takes the reader from standard municipal opera in town theaters to the new phenomenon of open-air opera that started fitfully in the late 1860s but which became fashionable and important for decentralist and regionalist reasons from around 1900 onward. In the first case study, Wagner’s Lohengrin is detoxified in 1891 via seven municipal French stages, in advance of its successful appearance at the Paris Opéra. This provincial coup nevertheless indicates the stranglehold of French repertorial centralization, since it was possible only because Wagner was already embarrassingly famous and the violent history of his reception in Paris had paralyzed the capital’s ability to function as normal. Lohengrin was acclaimed in Lille as “local” but contained no audible couleur locale. It was through such “marked” music that opera acted as a vector for the “picturesque” presentation of the French provinces. Changing critical and audience attitudes to couleur locale from the 1830s onward prepared the conditions necessary for the development of regionalist operatic commentary, especially in Brittany and Provence. Identity, whether local and/or national, could also be enacted by audiences attending festival and commemorative performances of opera and stage spectacle in open-air venues. Catalyzed by performances at Orange, a tradition of open-air opera presented a distillation of meridional musical identity from around 1900 in ancient classical venues and their modern equivalents, while the new music it spawned remained stubbornly difficult to transplant to Paris.

Valentia Slate, Co. Kerry, Ireland: a Global Heritage Stone Resource proposal

<div><span>Valentia Slate from the southwest of Ireland, is herein proposed as a Global Heritage Stone Resource. This Middle Devonian (Givetian) purple to pale green-coloured</span><span>, </span><span>fine-grained siltstone comprises the Valentia Slate Formation, part of the Old Red Sandstone which extensively crops out in southern Ireland.  The unit</span><span>, </span><span>which developed as an alluvial fan, has a thickness of over 3000m </span><span>and shows a well developed cleavage and low metamorphic grade imposed during the Variscan which produced its slaty fabric. Although quarried from small surface openings from the late eighteenth century, the commercial value of certain horizons of the Valentia Slate Formation was first recognised by the local landowner The Knight of Kerry who commenced its extraction at Dohilla in 1816 for use as roofing slates.  The operation was expanded from the 1820s by the Hibernian Mining Company and later by the Valentia Slab Company and its successor</span><span>, </span><span>the Valentia Slate Company</span><span>, </span><span>which continued to quarry the stone until the late 1870s. Initally stone was extracted from surface workings but since 1840 it has been exclusively obtained from underground workings. From the 1880s the quarry went into decline due to competition from Wales and extraction ceased altogether in 1911 following a large rockfall at the opening to the quarry.  It was revived in the 1980s and recent investment has resulted in </span><span>being able to provide </span><span>this quality stone to widespread markets. Although not easily split into thin slates Valentia Slate was first used locally for roofing and general building. However</span><span>, </span><span>as it could be cut into slabs of a variety of thicknesses and lenghts of up to 3m it was more readily adopted</span><span>, </span><span>both nationally and internationally</span><span>, </span><span>for use in buildings for window cills, steps, domestic fittings in bathrooms and kitchens, and paving both externally and internally as in the Houses of Parliament in London, the Paris Opera House, and for flagging in </span><span>a </span><span>number of British railway termini.  The stone </span><span>was susceptible to </span><span>and held sharp carving, and it it was also fabricated into headstones, memorials, garden furniture, and shelving. Stone was even exported in the 1870s to Brazil for use as railway sleepers. Craftsmen also </span><span>fabricated </span><span>lamps </span><span>and </span><span>birdhouses from the material and its most celebrated use was for billiard and snooker tables, a number of </span><span>which </span><span>were highly decorative having been enamelled.  During the height of production over 500 men were employed quarrying and working Valentia Slate. The first tramway in an Irish quarry was installed in about 1816 and was used to transport stone and sawn slabs from the quarry to Knightstown</span><span>, </span><span>some 4km away</span><span>, </span><span>where it was further fabricated if required in a dedicated stoneyard prior to exportation from the adjacent slate quay.  Today extraction continues and the stone is used for a variety of restoration, decorative and construction purposes. The longevity of its extraction, its versatility of use, and the extent of the exportation of the Valentia Slate makes it worthy to be proposed as a Global Heritage Stone Resource.</span></div>

Avoiding silent opera: the ‘grand’ performing right at work in nineteenth century Paris

The music industry has been made possible through performing rights based on a law introduced by the post-revolutionary French national assembly in 1791. However, it took until the mid-nineteenth century until a system of royalty collection was established in France (and another half a century or more in other countries). In France, this new system for non-dramatic performing rights was preceded by royalty regulations in theatres. This study describes how nineteenth century composers were compensated for their work in the Paris Opera through this performing right for drama, known as the ‘grand right’. The tariff-based compensation method had been put in place by a royal réglement in 1713. It created a classic winner-take-all phenomenon in which composers such as Auber, Meyerbeer, and Halévy thrived in the nineteenth century. A contributing fact was the opera house programming which, contrary to the programming of today, favoured new pieces. ‘Grand opéras’ were à la mode and they contributed to the financial success of their composers. However, these operas eventually lost their attraction. In 1884, the Paris Opera adopted a compensation system based on a percentage of box office revenues. The study is based on primary data for 1810–1866.

Ballet Fit for a National Theater? Carré, the Critics, and Le Cygne at the Opéra-Comique

When Albert Carré became the director of the Paris Opéra-Comique in 1898, he did so with the goal of rejuvenating French lyric theater. He also took possession of a national institution in a state of flux. The Opéra-Comique had a new hall and a new mandate, and it had recently become the focus of debates in the press about what role the city’s second national lyric theater should play in French culture. Although debates initially revolved around opera, Carré’s plans for renewal included ballet, not seen at the Opéra-Comique for over a century. This article discusses the role ballet played in promoting Carré’s artistic objectives. At first glance the theater’s repertoire appears to be at odds with Carré’s progressive ideals. The Opéra-Comique staged only one innovative ballet, Le Cygne (1899)—a pop-culture-inflected mythological parody by Catulle Mendès, Charles Lecocq, and Madame Mariquita. Carré then turned to staging old-fashioned pantomime-ballets, confining innovative dances to divertissements in operas. The reasons for Carré’s repertoire decisions can, I argue, be found in the reception of Le Cygne. Carré’s initial ballet was highly contested, and critics’ arguments mirrored ongoing press debates about ballet’s value and place in French culture. I contend that Carré’s initial modernist ballet, and his shift to mixing conventional pantomime-ballets with modern opera divertissements in response to the contentious reception of Le Cygne, were part of a calculated attempt to establish the Opéra-Comique as an emblematic French national theater that was simultaneously a museum and a progressive space for modern innovation.

How to Catch the Devil? Performance Materiality and Meyerbeer's Robert le Diable

Stage machinery enters the historical narrative often enough through mishaps and interruptions. This article takes as its starting point a report of the Paris opera director Véron in order to think about the role of materiality in the analysis of past performances. The occasion, depicted in the report, is the opening night of Robert le Diable, written by Eugène Scribe and composed by Giacomo Meyerbeer. The article discusses two key questions on the historiographic value of the report as a source for performance analysis. (1) How can we unfold the performativity of a past performance through archival documents? (2) What is the impact of the materiality of machinery, bodies and space in the theatrical interplay?